Steve Rhodes Interviewed in The Marker

Editor’s note: This interview with Steve Rhodes was featured in the popular “Inner Dialogue” column in the Hebrew-language business newspaper, The Marker. The original article appeared in Hebrew.

“Every successful entrepreneur is a little insane, because he goes against the flow”

By Rotem Shtarkman and Eliran Rubin, The Marker (7 April 2017)

The most important thing, according to Steve Rhodes, CEO of Trendlines, is the personality of the entrepreneur. Besides that, he talks about the relationship with the Office of the Chief Scientist [Israel Innovation Authority], the companies that Trendlines invests in, and the Singapore IPO. | “It’s possible to succeed for many reasons that have nothing to do with you. Success has a random component. Failure, however, can be measured and analyzed”

“You can succeed for a lot of reasons that have nothing to do with you. You can’t just say, ‘Look how smart I am, I succeeded.’ With success, there is an element of randomness.”

Let’s talk about the failures in high-tech businesses.

Since 1993, when I set up a consulting firm for Israeli companies, I noticed a phenomenon that was repeated over and over again — a lot of start-ups with good products fail.

What was their problem?

Entrepreneurs do not have business experience, and the problem is that there is no one to support them. There is no one to direct them to success. Even companies in which technological incubators are invested in do not receive support.

It’s strange, that’s why there are incubators.

The incubators that I saw took the ‘exist and forget (about them)’ approach — invest in many companies in the hope that something will succeed. An incubator manager once told me that his method was to intervene only when a problem arose.